Tower To The Sun - Chapter 2: When You Least Expect It

Author's note: The Nephites were a group of people whose history is recorded in The Book of Mormon, which is another testament of Jesus Christ. This sacred book of scripture tells of Christ's visit to the Americas and the people who were among the first to inhabit the continent. The Nephites lived from 388 BC to 400 AD, and originally descended from a seer and prophet named Lehi who was told by God to leave take his family and leave their homeland of Jerusalem and travel to the promised land in America.

This and chapters yet to come will also include references to two groups known as the Lamanites and Gadianton robbers. These groups often persecuted and fought against the Nephites in numerous wars chronicled by other prophets throughout The Book of Mormon.

The following is a work of fiction, but it includes historical references to the ancient Nephite civilization that I have attempted to make as accurate as possible. All characters, unless noted, are thus fictional.

If you would like to learn more about the Nephites and Christ's visit to the Americas, you can request a free copy of The Book of Mormon by visiting http://www.mormon.org, as well as learn of Christ's teachings in our modern day.

______________________________________________________________________

“Himni,” I asked, still holding onto him as we rode unsteadily through the trees. It had been a while since I’d ridden a horse, and I was really afraid of falling off in the event that something spooked Hakan. I also couldn’t see anything that was in front of us unless I leaned far to either side, since Himni was right in front of me. “How did you GET here?”

My new Nephite friend seemed preoccupied with something. He was staring ahead, deeply focused. Sometimes he’d glance to either side, obviously tense.

“Um…hello?”

A few moments of silence passed, during which he ignored me completely – or just wasn’t listening. “…Yes?” he finally said, looking over his shoulder at me. “What was that?”

I gave a small sigh. “What are you so worried about? There’s nobody around here until we get to town.”

He frowned at me incredulously. “Of course there are people around. And they’re dangerous. You said you live around here; I can’t believe you haven’t seen any Gadianton robbers, much less Lamanites!”

Biting my lower lip, I glanced at the ground nervously. This was not really the conversation I wanted to be getting into. It was weird enough that this Nephite warrior was real, riding a horse through Logan canyon. It would be even weirder, and extremely awkward, for me to attempt to explain to him that he was supposed to be existing thousands of years ago instead of today and that the only Lamanites left were now called the descendants of Aztecs and Mayans.

“How would I know why I haven’t seen any?” I said, dodging the real issue that was hanging over us precariously, though Himni was blissfully unaware of it. “I don’t come into this canyon much…make that hardly ever. They just aren’t around.”

Himni grumbled something under his breath. I couldn’t hear what he said exactly, but I could still detect the skepticism in his voice.

The drone of nearby cars driving by suddenly caught my attention. I looked up, getting apprehensive of the thought of what would happen when we actually emerged out onto the road.

“Hey, don’t go past those trees!” I exclaimed without warning, practically yelling into Himni’s ear. He immediately tugged on Hakan’s mane, bringing us to a complete stop.

“What is it??” he demanded, turning around to more or less face me while still on the horse’s back. He’d drawn his bow and notched an arrow in seconds, and he was now looking around ever more alertly. “Did you see one? A Gadianton?”

“Well…no,” I admitted sheepishly, sorry to have made him panic. “We just can’t go out onto the road, where people will see us. It wouldn’t be safe.”

“So NOW you believe me about the Lamanites?”

I shook my head. “That’s not what I’m talking about! Out there just a few more yards away is where all the cars are going by at around fifty miles an hour.”

I realized too late after I’d said it that he wouldn’t have any idea of what the heck I was talking about.

“Roads are made for horses,” he said simply, like that explained everything. “And what is a car?”

About to answer him, I opened my mouth to reply when out of nowhere came an extremely loud, extremely vicious war cry. Startled, I looked in the direction it had come from. When I saw the cause of the noise I almost fainted and fell off the horse.

Several dozen men were flooding out of the forest and rushing towards us in an all out charge, holding up long spears with jagged obsidian tips. Most of them had bows as well, and were notching their arrows to the strings as they ran. All of them were dressed like savages, yelling horribly loud, and had what I could only assume was blood painted all over their bodies. It was like something from a nightmare.

Himni wasted no time in taking charge of the situation. Yelling back at them in defiance and frustration, he yanked on Hakan’s mane again so hard that the horse reared on both legs and neighed in agitation, then turned and ran in the opposite direction of the charge. Himni urged his steed on, pushing him faster and faster so that we were practically flying past the landscape we had just minutes ago been standing on. It was all I could do to grit my teeth and hold onto him for dear life.

I didn’t dare look back, but I could still hear the war cries of the savage Lamanites, or Gadiantons, or whichever they were echoing after us. They sounded genuinely enraged. Worse, I heard the SHHHHHHP sound of arrows flying through the air after us. Through my squinted eyes I actually saw one whistle past us, missing its mark. I cried out in surprise and fear for both our lives.

“Hold on!” shouted Himni over the chaos of the bloodthirsty band chasing us down. We had the advantage on horseback, but we weren’t going as fast as we could have because of the steep terrain we were crossing over. Himni was trying to stay near the trees, boulders, any landmark he could see that we could quickly dodge behind and avoid being hit by arrows. Chancing a glance behind me, I saw quite a few of the feather-tipped projectiles lodged in the trunks of numerous pines.

“Let’s see how many arrows we can make them waste,” he said with a hint of wry humor towards our perilous situation. I was too busy freaking out to say anything back.

There wasn’t much of anything on my mind besides how in the world we were going to save ourselves. And I was sure the same thought was stuck on my Nephite friend’s mind, too. Outnumbered twenty something to three, if you counted the horse, what were our chances of getting to anywhere safe?

He seemed to answer my question by looking back as we rode forward, the arrow from earlier still notched to his bow, and letting go with a determined look on his face. The cry of a Lamanite behind us let me know he’d hit his target. He repeated the same act a few more times, but had to look ahead again so he could guide Hakan around various obstacles.

“Do you know where you’re going?!” I screamed.

“The river!” he yelled back at me, urging Hakan to go faster still.

What river?! I wanted to shout indignantly at him. He obviously had no CLUE where we were, and there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in July of us getting out al…

“…Alive,” I finished my thought silently. Because as we went charging over the side of the canyon, the view before my eyes was not the valley of Utah I’d grown so used to seeing over the past year. I saw no buildings. No roads, no cars traveling over them. No lights flashing. No billboards. Instead, there right below us was a massive expanse of nothing but jungle as far as the eye could see. And the first obstacle to cross, in fact, was a river – just like Himni had said.

My mind felt like it was doing somersaults, trying to make sense of what had just happened to my former reality. I became rigid statue, clinging like a monkey to Himni as tightly as I possibly could, and started shaking pretty hard. He must have taken that as a sign that I was scared, which I was, but I was much more confused and utterly shocked than anything else. He gripped my hand and squoze it reassuringly.

It sort of helped. But we were still being hunted down by a band of Lamanites and Gadianton robbers.

My worry was for no reason, though. Hakan knew exactly what to do. Himni didn’t even need to urge him forward: the horse just charged towards the river with no fear whatsoever, plunging into the rushing water. It was deep – I was soaked immediately up up to my waist. We both kept our heads above the water as best we could and had no choice but to trust the horse would get us to the other side.

And a minute later we did. Dragging himself onto the shore with us still on his back, Hakan trotted past the muddy edge of the river until he was standing on dry grass, then shook the water out of his mane, panting hard. Himni and I sputtered and coughed, trying to catch our breath. The terror of our experience still fresh in my mind, I refused to let go of him, even though I was shivering violently. On the other side of the river, the band of murderers were cursing and jumping around in a rage. A few threw their spears at us to relieve their fury, but of course their weapons couldn’t reach farther than halfway across the fast-moving river. They shouted a few more curses in our direction, then turned and skulked away to find somewhere dryer to cross.

Himni glared at them as they left, clenching his teeth. He was too exhausted to yell anything back at them, though, and we had to wait a few minutes before either of us had the energy to speak.

“Are you all right?” was the first thing he said to me when he’d recovered. He looked back at me as he did, taking in my miserable and soggy condition. Of course, he looked just as bedraggled as I did.

“Y-yeah,” I nodded, loosening the iron grip I had on him. “That was…pretty brave of you back there.”

He managed a half smile. I’ve grown up fighting their kind,” he replied. “It’s nothing.” He ran his hand through Hakan’s wet mane as the horse grazed peacefully; evidently crossing the river had worked up his appetite. Himni looked back the way we had come as he added, “But I cannot take you back home in the same direction now, I’m afraid…Gadiantons are sure to flood this area now once they hear of our escape. They hate losing.”

I gulped back my sudden panic at his words. I seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. “So what are we supposed to do?” I asked, afraid of what the answer to that might be.

“Don’t worry,” Himni said. “I’ll make sure you get back home. But we have a lot of traveling to do before we get there…it’s a week’s ride or more in order to follow the path that will take us safely past any Gadianton outposts and get us to the mouth of the canyon.“

The week’s ride part wasn’t what bothered me. It was the jungle surrounding me that had me practically in tears. I should be standing in some suburban community set on the edge of the valley, not on the bank of a river covered by dense tropical jungle plants. Even if we did make the journey Himni was suggesting, it would take us to a Nephite settlement…not my city of Logan, not my apartment.

I had entered a completely foreign and alien new world, and with no foreseeable way of getting out. I could see that there was no way of avoiding telling my Nephite friend the truth about our vastly different worlds now.

“Himni,” I said shakily. “I really appreciate all that you’ve done to help me. But I have to tell you something.”

He watched me expectantly.

I took a deep breath, sighed, and looked him in the eyes so he wouldn’t doubt my sincerity. “…I’m from the future. Or…actually, you’re from the past.”

Himni just stared at me.

This was going nowhere, I moaned. How in the world was I supposed to make him believe me?

“I’m serious! We have a…book about you. Scriptures. They tell us everything from your ancestor Nephi who first came here and settled this land, to the end of your civilization entirely. Ask me anything, I’ll know the answer! I wouldn’t lie to you about this, Himni, I swear.”

He didn’t look any more convinced than he had been a few moments ago. Even more humiliatingly, his face was slowly contorting into a huge grin.

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not!!”

My indignant attitude only amused him further. He busted up laughing, so hard that a couple tears came out of his eyes.

“Wow…” he managed to say through his tears of laughter. “I’ve just saved the life of…a crazy person…”

“I am NOT A CRAZY PERSON!!”

I might as well have been talking to a brick wall. No matter what I said, he would not stop laughing for a second. I think my comments only made him laugh harder, to be honest. Still, I smiled a little reluctantl and figured: at least he had a sense of humor. Even if he didn’t believe me…somehow I’d get through to this Nephite.

I waited as patiently as I could for him to compose himself. He did, at long last, and wiped the tears from his eyes, grinning that ridiculously funny grin that made his eyes light up, like they were smiling, too.

“I’m sorry,” he said, chuckling. “Where were we? You’re from the future, hmm?”

“Yeah,” I groaned. “You don’t have to believe me, but…I just don’t know how I’m going to get home…”

Sadly I looked at the river and hugged my arms to my chest. The only sound was the running water and Hakan munching the long grass contentedly, occasionally swishing his tail at a fly.

“…I told you,” Himni said gently. “I will make sure you get home. I promise. And I never break my promises.”

I looked at him with a grateful smile. Why couldn’t every man on earth be like this genuinely kind and honest Nephite?

“I appreciate it, Himni,” I said. “And I’m glad to call you my friend.”